Etsy to give female programmers $5000 to attend hacker school

Etsy is pretty much awesome. Not only does it give crafty individuals a way to make a living off of their creativity, but it serves as a marketplace for the entrepreneur. But it’s even better than that. Etsy will be hosting the 2012 session of Hacker School in New York, but will also offer 10 $5000 grants to women who want to attend and may financially be unable to do so.

According to Etsy’s VP of engineering Marc Hedlund, the idea is to ensure that about half of the next Hacker School class (around 40 peope) will be female.

Hacker School is a pretty new program that was launched to teach budding programmers how to be better hackers. It’s a full-time program that lasts three months in New York. The deadline for applying for this year’s session is May 7 and the school runs from June to August. The school itself is a free program, but the Etsy grants are being set up so that students can spend the money on whatever expenses necessary to free potential students up to attend the program.

Hedlund does acknowledge that 20 isn’t a lot, but that he has hired about 20 female engineers himself in the past 17 years. He also stated he would be more than happy to hire any engineers coming out of this year’s Hacker School participants. “But more importantly, we just want to see these women go on to get fun, creative, lucrative jobs in technology – and hopefully tell other women about the great experiences they’ve had.”